Movable objects, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can be used for performing surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration tasks in a wide variety of environments for both military and civilian applications. Such movable objects may operate in close proximity to obstacles (e.g., objects or subjects such as human beings) and in instances may come into contact with the obstacles. Collision with humans, animals, or objects may lead to injury, damage (e.g., to objects or the UAV) or failure of operations UAVs are tasked with. To avoid collision, UAVs may include sensors configured for obstacle avoidance.
Existing approaches for obstacle avoidance may be less than optimal in some instances. For example, collision avoidance utilizing vision sensors may be disabled or limited in dim or dark light and may utilize complicated algorithms requiring costly CPUs. For example, collision avoidance utilizing lidar sensors may deteriorate in an outdoor environment due to sunlight and may operate under a complex mechanism requiring many parts (e.g., laser head, rotating device, camera, processors, etc).